


To You Alone

by fiveyaaas



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: (it comes next chapter sorry), Angst, Angst and Porn, Complicated Relationships, Deception, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Panic Attacks, Secret Identity, Smut
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-08
Updated: 2020-11-08
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:29:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27449404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fiveyaaas/pseuds/fiveyaaas
Summary: She could never tell him why she wanted him.[Written for Fiveya Week, Day 6: Endings/Beginnings]
Relationships: Number Five | The Boy/Vanya Hargreeves
Comments: 6
Kudos: 38
Collections: fiveya week (round 2)





	To You Alone

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lofticries](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lofticries/gifts), [nightcoast](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nightcoast/gifts), [moreghosthangirl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/moreghosthangirl/gifts).



> Okay, so this is not nearly as angsty or dark as the tags make it sound, but if the tags make you uncomfortable, please skip this fic! 
> 
> I am dedicating this fic to lofticries, nightcoast, and moreghosthangirl! They are all so wonderful for all the organizing they do for the fiveyas, and they’re all so welcoming and kind to us all! My love goes out to all of them, and I am so happy to have participated in this round of fiveya week (and if there’s any future events, I can assure you I’ll be joining them!)

_“Cried out, to you alone_

_What’s in you? Throw me a bone_

_Oh life, what did you do?_

_How do we ever decide?”_

Vanya knows that she is lying to her boyfriend. 

She knows this, but she also knows that if she explains _why_ she cared for him, _what_ drew him to her, that he would be disgusted. Plus, she reasons, they’re taking things relatively slow. They haven’t even slept together yet, which is a rarity among the array of shabby romances she’d partaken in over the years. He doesn’t ever pressure her for information, and she just… does not share it willingly. It has been a month into the relationship, which she feels is likely still an acceptable amount of time to be hiding pertinent details from someone, especially considering that it is not even that important of a detail.

Besides, no guy wants to hear that their partner is with them because he reminds them of their _brother._

She figures that hiding this detail protects both of them- him, from knowing that she wants to be with him because he reminds her of her brother; her, because she doesn’t want to see the look of revulsion in his eyes as he realizes. 

So, she hasn’t told him. Maybe, _maybe_ she’ll get lucky, and this’ll fizzle out the way every one of her other relationships tended to do. She just has to be patient until he inevitably realizes she’s a little too sad or boring or ordinary. Once that happens, she’ll be free of having this conversation, and it will be for the better. 

It _will_ be for the better. No matter how much she likes this one, she knows that there is no way he’ll like _her_ by the end of it. Sometimes, it’s her own fault, that they don’t like her. She is sometimes unsettled by the concept of paramores sharing details about themselves because a lot of times, they’ll lose the image they resemble in her mind. Of course, it’s not _always_ her fault. She remembers her ex-girlfriend who’d realized she had been a Hargreeves, and she’d started bothering her about meeting her siblings, getting irritated each time Vanya said, ‘well, we’re not exactly close’ until she eventually left her.

Either way it would be for him, she knew he would leave her, and it was for the best. Because this is not Five, and he would eventually prove that he wasn’t. 

* * *

She lays down next to him on the hood of his car, cuddled up under blankets and staring up at the sky. They are supposed to be watching a meteor shower, but she’s distracted by being this close to him for such a long time, and she can feel her heart fluttering against her chest. 

“I’ve never really been interested in astronomy,” James tells her, lacing their fingers together and settling them against his chest. “My brother loves everything to do with space, is fascinated by it, but I haven’t ever been.”

She finds herself thinking about Luther, on the moon, so far away that she can pathetically tell herself that he doesn’t contact her for that reason. Vanya had never been close to Luther, but she sometimes pretends that if she were to pass away, he’d go to her funeral. She likes that thought, that someone would go to it, that someone would even remember if she was gone. She can’t pretend with Allison or Diego or Klaus, really. Her door has been open to them if they would choose to just _knock._ So, she imagines sometimes that Luther wants to be home, wants her to be included so that they can be good friends. They could bond over people they lost, and they could not be so alone. She likes that thought a lot, not being alone. 

She doesn’t tell James about her own brother, who people sometimes call Space Boy, who had always been fascinated by things like meteor showers or solar eclipses. If James began to suspect where she had come from, he would inevitably realize that she was ordinary, just by comparison to her extraordinary siblings. 

“I’ve never been interested either, really,” Vanya tells him, instead. In all honesty, she doesn’t know whether or not she cares about space. She sometimes finds herself looking at the moon, though, wondering if there was anything on it besides her brother. 

“We didn’t have to do this,” he says, shrugging. “We could just skip it and go to dinner or something else if you’d like.” 

She shakes her head, “No, this is fine! I didn’t mean to sound like I was complaining-“

“You didn’t.”

She nods, clearing her throat and trying to watch the sky. Vanya considers climbing on top of him and making out with him, but she’s starting to wonder if the fact that he has respected her decision to take it slow for so long because he is not interested in her that way.

“Are you gay?” Vanya asks. 

He frowns. “Why do you ask?”

“I can’t decide if you’re attracted to me or if I’m a beard.”

He furrows his dark brows, “I’m attracted to you.”

“Physically?”

Vanya realizes that he’s shaking with silent laughter. 

_“What?”_ This is the first time she’s felt comfortable enough with someone she’s dating to snap at them, she realizes, filing that information for later. 

“Weren’t you the one who asked to take it slow?” James asks, once he seemingly realizes he can do so without laughing at her, not that his voice wasn’t dripping with amusement anyways.

Vanya blushes, “I mean, it’s just…”

When she trails off, James asks, abruptly switching his tone to one of concern, “What is it, V?”

She feels her heart stutter at him calling her ‘V’, remembering how Five used to call her that. It warms her a little more to James, and she finds herself saying, “Well, normally, when I’ve told people I want to take it slow, they just don’t respect it.”

James makes an angered noise. It triggers a memory of the time Diego had tripped her and made her split her lip and she’d told Five, who’d she’d only realized retaliated at him when she found out Diego was in the infirmary. James clears his throat quickly, saying, “Well, I would respect that. Also, if you want to offer up the names and addresses of your exes, I wouldn’t object.”

She giggles at the easy way he jokes to comfort her, “You’re sweet, thank you.”

He scowls, “Respecting boundaries like that isn’t _sweet,_ it’s necessary.” 

She shrugs, not really knowing how to respond to what he was saying. He’s kind, much kinder than most people she had been with. It’s sometimes hard, knowing that there are people like James out there, but she had never been with them before. Obviously there had to be _some_ people like him, and maybe she had just attracted a bunch of creeps. 

The problem is that she knows he’s kind and once he _does_ break up with her? It will hurt that much more. 

“Vanya,” he says. “Don’t let people treat you that way, okay?

“Okay” she agrees. 

He smiles at her softly, taking her hand to his lips and kissing the back of it. It reminds her of something Five had done once, which made her heart start to speed against her chest. She leans against his shoulder, tucking her head against his neck. The chaste kiss he places to her forehead makes her smile. 

“James?”

His voice is gentle, but hesitant. “Yes, Vanya?”

She clears her throat, stopping herself from saying what she wants to say. If he thinks she’s clingy, he’ll certainly want to leave her. Instead, she says, “I enjoy spending time with you.”

“I’m glad.”

They’re quiet for a while, but it’s not uncomfortable. It’s… nice, honestly. She does yawn at one point, though, and he makes a small, almost disapproving noise. “Are you tired?”

It had been a long day, actually, and she finds herself telling him about it, about how her conductor had stopped in the middle of the rehearsal to berate her. When tears start pricking at her eyes, she finds herself apologizing

“Why are you apologizing?” James asks. 

“I shouldn’t be so emotional,” she explains, wiping at her tears with her sleeve. “It’s stupid, that I’m even this upset.”

“It’s not stupid. Your conductor is an ass, and being upset about it is a perfectly acceptable response.” James sounds like he’s genuinely offended on her behalf, and she’s once again taken aback by his kindness. Last week, she’d told him that he was the sweetest person she’d ever met, and he’d burst into laughter. She’d asked him to explain what was so funny about that, and he’d stopped, quickly explaining that that was not an adjective often used to describe him. Supposedly, he has a reputation of being kind of a grouch, but she suspects he thinks of himself as worse than he really is. Though she supposes he sometimes seems like a grumpy old man, particularly in unfortunate traffic situations. 

Vanya wonders again, how he would react if she climbed on top of his lap. It is something she thinks about a lot, but he is right in pointing out that it had been her who’d wanted to take it slow. The problem is- she _wants_ to have sex with him. She’d been hesitant to throw herself into a relationship again, but she _wants_ to throw herself into a relationship again. Okay, really, she wants to throw herself onto his lap until she forgot about the bad day she had and everything else beside his likeness to-

“We don’t have to talk about that,” James tells her, sounding concerned by her lack of further comment. She can’t exactly say _what_ she’d been thinking about, anyways, so she doesn’t try to reassure James that his listening to her while she confided in him actually did help. “Sorry, I shouldn’t butt into something like-“

“I appreciate that you do,” Vanya interrupts. “I just… was thinking. Sorry.”

“It’s fine.” He squeezes her hand. “What were you thinking about?” 

She frowns, not knowing how he’d respond if she told him. 

Eventually, he squeezes her hand again, “It’s fine, don’t worry.”

Maybe it’s that he’s _too_ kind. Five had never been this understanding to _anybody,_ even if he’d been somewhat different to her. There’s something suspicious to her with how _kind_ James is. Nobody should be this sweet. 

Still, she really does like him. And when she falls asleep on his shoulder and he carries her to the passenger seat before driving her home, she finds that, at the very least, she doesn’t mind being taken care of.

* * *

“Have you ever been in love?” Vanya asks him, two months into their relationship. They’re on her couch, drinking down poorly crafted, rum-heavy daiquiris, and it’s making her more comfortable talking to him, being somewhat loose-lipped when she is tipsy. 

“Oh, lord,” James sighs, laying down and staring at the ceiling. “Yes. Twice, I’d say. Though one was much more significant to me. Much more _real._ ”

“Have you been married?”

His lips twitch, “Oh, no. I would have if… the circumstances had been different with either of those women.”

“So you’re not gay.”

He rolls his eyes to her, “If anything, I guess I’d say _bi,_ but, honestly, it’s hard for me to be attracted to people.”

She laughs, “You mean when you approached me and gave me a good number you were just… what, trying to strike up a friendship?”

He shrugs, “Yeah, something like that.”

She smiles against her cup, taking another drink.

“I’ve only ever been with one other…” He sighs again, locking his jaw for a second before continuing, “I’ve only really had one _relationship,_ outside of this one. I guess you could say I slept around, after that one ended, but it wasn’t a _lot._ Just… a way to get my mind off of my job. Sexual attraction was never an issue, really, but I’ve never been able to replicate legitimate feelings for anybody.”

“So that relationship… was it the one that was more _real_ as you put it?”

“No,” James' eyes fill with sadness, and she wonders if he’s holding back tears. “No, it’s… It was a complicated situation, with her. And the other… we never would have been together.”

“Why?”

“I had an… unconventional upbringing, and I was much younger when I had a chance to be with... for anything to have happened.”

Vanya thinks back to her own upbringing, of Five running away before they could have ever possibly been together or developed how they felt for one another. That is undoubtedly not the reason for James, but she feels sympathy towards him again. She feels warmer to him as she often finds herself doing, which was vexing for many reasons. “So, was it that you just weren’t able to communicate before you could be together? Like you’ve just never had a good example of love?”

“I suppose both of those statements hold truth, but the main thing I think was that I just wasn’t present.”

She understands that. She’d been absent in many of her relationships as well, and it had caused a lot of them to end prematurely. “That makes sense,” she says. It’s the rum, making her ask what she does next, “Could you see feeling that way for me? What you felt for them?”

“Yeah, Vanya,” James tells her, glancing away and flushing, from the alcohol or something else she couldn’t tell. “I could see that.”

He sounds almost apprehensive when he asks, “Have you?”

“Have I what?”

“Have you ever been in love?” 

Five’s face flashes into her mind, unbidden. She bites at her lip, thinking about how to answer, “No, I don’t… I don’t think so.”

“Not even when you were young?” James adds, a forced-looking grin moving across his features. She supposes it’s because he’d been forced to be vulnerable in front of her, and he’s uncomfortable now. “When you were young and kinda dumb and just assumed you were in love with the first person you held hands with?”

She isn’t certain on this, but she’s pretty certain Five was the first person she held hands with. And she still sometimes thinks she’s in love with him, by everything she had done leading up to this point. But she can’t say that to James; he wouldn’t understand. He’d think she was a freak for being in love with someone she called her ‘brother.’ 

“I didn’t really interact with anybody outside of my family when I was younger,” Vanya says. “So… uh, obviously, well, there was nobody that I cared for there that way.”

He raises his brows, “I suppose there wouldn’t be, huh?”

“Yeah, because that would be super _wrong.”_

“Okay?” It sounds like more of a question, the way he phrases it, and she internally cringes at the way she’s protested so much.

Still, she keeps going, “Well, I mean, it’s just gross, the idea of being attracted to my sibling. So nasty. Just the worst. Completely disgusting. Abhorrent, really, if you’re so inclined to say that word. Which I _am.”_

“Are you hot?”

She frowns, and he amends his words by clarifying, “You’re sweating.”

“Oh. Uh.”

He raises his brows. 

“I have. No… air conditioning.”

James stares dubiously at her AC loudly screaming its laments about the world in the corner. Damn window unit. 

“I drank too much,” Vanya continues, realizing he’s witnessing her flounder. “In fact, I probably won’t even remember this conversation tomorrow. So don’t bring it up. Please.”

There’s a few beats of silence.

“I’m going to grab you a glass of water,” James says eventually, realizing she maybe wouldn’t speak for quite a bit. “And some ibuprofen. Hopefully, that’ll stave off a hangover. You think you could eat anything?”

“Do you even know how to cook?”

“Not well,” he admits. “But I could throw something together. Probably. If it doesn’t involve using an oven. Or a stove.”

She laughs, sensing the uneasiness she’d sensed from him evaporate. “Sure,” she tells him. “I could eat something.”

* * *

He watches her in the crowd, and she wonders if this is the first time ever that anybody she knows has volunteered to come to any of her concerts. She stiffly tries to rosin up her bow, flicking her eyes away from his studious gaze. She’d told him that she wasn’t _that_ great, that her chair was insignificant. That, in the grand scheme of it all, she was ordinary. 

And he’d told her he couldn’t imagine her being anything less than extraordinary. 

She peeks at him through her peripheral, blushing as she realizes she isn’t subtle enough that he doesn’t notice, based on the amused way he smirks. 

Then, the concertmaster is dragging her bow against the string, and they’re tuning before they start. She adjusts the finetune quickly, focusing only on her violin. Their first piece tonight is a Sibelius, and she smiles softly to herself, remembering the days she’d once lamented about wanting to be good enough to play Sibelius to Five. More and more, she finds herself thinking about Five, and she knows it’s because James bears such a striking resemblance. It feels wrong, by this point, to not have told him, but she doesn’t know _how_ to now. 

Plus, there’s just something _off_ about him. He’s still _too_ kind. It’s disconcerting, and she knows she shouldn’t be comparing him to Five. She knows it’s damning the relationship from the start, but there’s a part of her that _wants_ it to be damned. 

She makes a mistake as they’re playing, a note much too sharp and likely even the audience could hear, and she feels panic rise within her. Her legs start to tremble, and she can _feel_ her conductor’s eyes on her, stomach lurching. Thankfully, she doesn’t struggle much after, but that’s not what has her on edge. 

When panic attacks come, usually she has the opportunity to hide somewhere a bit and wait for a pill to kick in, but she’s performing right now. She’s not sure what to do, and she spends the rest of the concert in a daze.

When the audience starts clapping, and she’s effectively dismissed, she jerkily walks away from the stage, legs trudging in the direction of the bathroom. 

But then she hears her conductor speaking behind her, and she flinches like it’s Reginald, about to berate her. 

“Vanya,” James’s voice interrupts the conductor, pursing his lips. There’s something like flailing, when the conductor starts speaking to him, and James cuts him off again, a venomous quality she’s never heard him use before. She can’t really focus on that, though, and she might have collapsed if Five hadn’t grabbed onto her forearm, keeping her steady.

No, not… not Five. It’s not Five. It’s James. _James._

The conductor is gone when he’s dragged her to the restroom, holding her hair back as she starts vomiting in one of the stalls. She’s not sure how he got there so quick, and she starts going again, him rubbing her back with his free hand and murmuring soothing words. 

“It’s okay, Vanya,” he tells her again. “I’m here, it’s okay.”

She wants to lay her head against the cool tile, not caring about the mass of germs that may harm her in that moment, but he gently lifts her up once he realizes she’s done, encouraging her to lay her head on his shoulder. When he realizes that she’s barely able to walk, he scoops her up, carrying her to his car. 

“Your pills, do you have them with you?” James asks, setting her violin case down beside her, and she realizes she hadn’t even grabbed it. 

“I don’t,” she presses her cheek to the window, feeling tears starting to fall down her cheeks. It’s miserable, crying in front of him, especially sober as she was. He reaches his hand out, palm face up, giving her the option to clasp their hands. As she does, he laces their fingers together, watching the cars in front of him. At some point, he’d pulled out of the parking lot, and he was maneuvering himself through the streets, face illuminated by streetlights in a warm glow. 

She closes her eyes, exhausted but also because she thinks it’ll stave off the tears. It doesn’t work, but he’s able to distract her long enough when he chides, “You should have them with you.”

“I _know_ that, F-“ Realizing she was about to say _Five,_ she instead goes for “fucking Christ,” imagining he’d just take it as a stuttered out expletive. Now, she’s started blending him together with Five, solely because of hearing him growling at the conductor moments ago. 

And she’s _entirely_ too emotional to deal with the distinct urge to ask him to pull over the car and-

“I’ll take you to your place.” His voice is quiet, and she realizes he’s starting to pull his hand away just as she grips onto it, digging her nails into his skin almost in her desperation. “Is it still really bad?”

“What?”

“The panic attack?”

Oh. She supposes it makes sense, that he’d know she has them. There had been a few she'd had _in front_ of him, even. But it feels like it’s a weakness, somehow, to admit it. Maybe it was that Reginald was also on her mind in that moment, having failed so tremendously at her concert. Really, there’s a lot of things on her mind, and she finds herself asking him if it was very noticeable, how she’d failed.

He frowns, glancing over to her quickly. “You sounded lovely, V. The only reason it was clear you’d messed up was the face you made after, but I don’t think anybody was looking. Is that why you’re upset?”

She can’t answer, and he doesn’t press her further. Her mind is starting to contrast the way he’d been with the conductor, and the way he is with her. “Why was my conductor talking to you that way?” It’s an abrupt question, but she’s still curious.

“I happen to be a donor to your orchestra.” 

She frowns, “You’re a donor to my orchestra?” It suddenly occurs to her that he drives a nice car, that he works at a job he’s vague about. 

“It seemed like a worthwhile place to donate to.”

“You didn’t… donate because of me, right?” At the very least, it wouldn’t be as bad as if he had approached her after she’d gotten there. 

“No.” 

She glances down, smiling despite herself, even though she knows he’s clearly lying.

It barely occurs to her that she already feels calm when they reach her place, and she grabs a pill without thinking much of it. James watched her take it, and she chews at her lip. 

He nearly sputters when she starts taking off her clothes, finally able to say moments before she’s fully unbuttoned her shirt, “Vanya, what are you doing?”

“Do you not…”

James makes a frustrated noise, reaching for her. “It’s not that I don’t, but I don’t want you to make a decision like when you’re upset and then regret it right after.”

She sighs, loudly. Before she can acknowledge to herself that he might be right, she channels the hurt at his rejection into annoyance, yelling, “Why do you have to be _so_ nice? It’s obnoxious! Be-“

“Let me get this straight,” he cut her off. “You’re mad at me for being too _nice?”_

She nods, nostrils flaring as she crosses her arms over her chest. 

He raises his brows, and she realizes he’s holding in laughter. 

It makes her even more annoyed, and then she's rambling on about how annoying it is that he never even argues back with her, that he’s ridiculously considerate of her feelings, that clearly he’s hiding something because nobody is that kind.

When she’s done, panting, he still looks as unaffected as ever. 

Vanya realizes why she’d gone off on him, and then she feels guilt at the realization. She’d been trying to get him to act like Five. 

She’d wanted him to be an ass, to snap at her-

Maybe it really would be her who made this one go. And maybe it would be for the best.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you guys for reading! 💕


End file.
